Monday, July 14, 2008

Another summer, another sunburn

This one's an amusing collar shape. I went walking in the park at high noon yesterday with friends, having carefully applied SPF 50 to my face and arms. But I'd forgotten the back of my neck and I was wearing my hair up because the day was so hot and muggy.

It doesn't hurt much, except in the sense that it hurts just to look at it. My poor white skin, what have I done to you?

Once when I was a teenager we spent a day on a lake in South Carolina with my uncle. Mom was being very tiresome, reminding me every hour to put more sunscreen on-- naturally I ignored her. The painful result doesn't bear much description, but eventually the happy stage was reached when pain was mostly gone and only the fascinating fun of peeling skin remained. It was coming off my legs in sheets. One day in the shower I saw that water had been seeping under the peeling layer and by the force of its own weight was slowly expanding that layer out away from the thigh until I was carrying maybe a third of a cup of water in a bulging pocket of dead skin. Weird!

2 comments:

Mary Rose said...

Ouch! I am also very fair. Please take care of yourself. Soaking a washcloth in vinegar and gently pressing it into the skin really soothes the burn.

Yes, you may smell like a salad, but at least the sting of the burn is removed... :-)

R.A. said...

That is the nastiest thing I've ever heard...I don't burn often, I mainly tan, and when I burned my peeling skin disgusted me so much that I COULDN'T peel it.